


the boundary you leave behind

by sapphicTechnician



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Era, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-25
Updated: 2014-04-25
Packaged: 2018-01-20 18:46:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1521611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicTechnician/pseuds/sapphicTechnician
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marco is too good for him. But Eren can pretend, at least for a little while.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the boundary you leave behind

**Author's Note:**

> An edited and expanded version of [this](http://snkkink.dreamwidth.org/8414.html?thread=7860446) kinkmeme fill.

Marco is sweet. Marco is freckles and dark hair and a laugh like he's embarrassed by it, a little clumsy on the ground, graceful in the air. Marco doesn't wake at night with screams dying in his throat and a city collapsing over his head. Marco doesn't watch the soldiers training and hate them, just a little, for not being quicker. Marco doesn't get angry sometimes, all the time, a slow burn under his skin every minute of every day. Marco isn't Eren.

Marco hasn't seen the things Eren has and maybe never will. Marco isn't broken somewhere deep inside the way Eren sometimes thinks he might be, a feeling like bone grating on bone underneath his skin, the stink of Shiganshina still clinging to his skin years later. Marco is open and gentle and Marco stops fights before they happen, encourages and praises and still wakes in the morning with a smile. Marco is consistency, simplicity, a steady fulcrum in their world of highs and lows.

They come together, fall apart. Eren's usually the one to initiate contact but Marco follows willingly enough. It's strange and awkward at first, teenage hormones and groping fingers and trying to understand their bodies, stealing too-hard kisses in the stables or pressed up against each other in the showers. Eren tries too hard, frustration coloring his face when he can't do or say the things he wants. Marco calms him. Marco goes slow and shows him the way, all the places to touch which set off fireworks in his mind. He doesn't ask the older boy where he learned. Marco doesn't offer. He would, Eren thinks, if he asked. But he doesn't care. It doesn't matter. When they're together it's just the wall up against his back and Marco's fingers, and Marco's lips, and the world contracting to the slide of skin on skin.

Marco is soft where Eren is hard, quiet where Eren is loud, gentle where Eren is rough. Eren leaves toothmark bruises on pale hips where they could almost be from sparring practice; Marco is all little ghost touches that barely graze the skin and still leave him begging. Eren flings himself into sex with the same single-minded determination he does training, Marco is relaxed and slow and doesn’t seem to mind where it ends up so long as they get to touch. When the other boys make jokes Eren denies everything and fights anyone who looks at him wrong, while Marco just laughs and keeps eating. They are opposites, two halves of a broken magnet, extremes which somehow meet in the middle and balance out.

Marco is too good for him, Eren knows. He worries sometimes that he'll taint the other boy, that some part of the fury he carries inside will rub off and ruin him, but still he doesn't stop. He wants this. He needs this. Marco is stability, security, someone who’s never been part of his past. Untouched. Eren fixes that with kisses hidden behind stable walls, bodies pressed against each other in the shower, shared bedrolls during wilderness training when no one is looking. He gives his anger, his desperation, his frustration to the other boy with hard bites and fingernails which dig in just a little too deep. Marco doesn’t object. Marco calms him and when they’re lying together, sated, Marco kisses him until he smiles.

They talk, once in a while. Marco talks about his family and his life and all he’s left behind, childhood friends and adventures, places he’s been. Eren drinks it in. He doesn’t volunteer information about his own past and Marco never asks. Maybe he knows already. Maybe he can taste it in Eren’s skin, blood and bitterness and what he’s done to survive. Either way he fills Eren’s head with stories of peacetime and families which don’t end beneath the rubble, friendships not based on desperation and the need to protect, to save, to keep alive. Marco is the life Eren's never had and he takes it, greedy for more. Marco gives it all. That's just the kind of boy he is.

And the world spins on and they spin on with it, training and education blurring the days until sometimes it feels like Eren’s always in the air, always flying, never quite touching the earth. They grow and change and Marco’s body feels leaner beneath his, sharp muscle outlining bone. They both wear the callus of the 3DMG harness, marking them beneath their clothes with bruises which Eren echoes on Marco’s neck, his hips, down the smooth sweep of his stomach. His hands have become confident. They are together less often now but when they are Eren knows how to make Marco cry out under his breath, and Marco knows how to make his breath quicken until stars explode in his vision. The day is coming when things will change, approaching fast on the horizon. They forget it. For here and now they have each other and they learn each other’s bodies until nothing else matters, until they can almost forget the uncertain future in the joy of the moment.

But it won't always be like this, Eren knows. Nothing ever stays. This he has learned well so many times over, this he tattoos into Marco's skin with desperate lips and tongue, tangled in blankets under the sweep of stars, holding just a little too hard: _it can't last forever_.

And Marco kisses back, _why not?_


End file.
